Liza
ONE OF THE REASONSI’m good at being a ghostwriter is that I’ve been a chameleon for as long as I can remember. I become whatever people want me to be. It’s almost effortless now—sussing out what others want or need and then transforming. Who am I, truly? I have no idea.
As a girl in a resort town, I watched the summer tourists. I saw how the teenagers wore their hair long, tucked behind an ear. They wore sweatshirts from boarding schools, Birkenstock sandals. Their teeth were perfect and white, even though they all smoked American Spirit cigarettes.
I saw how my crooked teeth marked me as a townie; I learned to smile with my lips shut. I found a Pomfret boarding school sweatshirt at the restaurant lost and found, waited a few weeks, then wore it constantly. I practiced the heavy-lidded stare that made the girls look stoned even when they weren’t stoned, the way they stood with their chests caved in, à la Kate Moss and her “heroin chic.” They were wispy, ethereal, whereas my classmates at Falmouth High were loud andbrash. The summer girls didn’tneedanything, they didn’tstrive,they didn’t shriek or laugh loudly.
I wanted to be one of them.
During the summer after my senior year at Falmouth High School, Patrick noticed me for the first time at a Jetty Beach bonfire, one of the parties where the locals mixed with the rich kids from Boston and New York City. He looked like a teenage John F. Kennedy with his jet-black hair. He drove an old BMW and lived (I knew because I’d followed him home once) in his parents’ enormous home on Juniper Point Road.
The first time we made love felt magical to me. Patrick was socalm,truly kind, and his home was everything I’d dreamed of. From his wide front porch, you could see the entire ocean. Inside, the home was cluttered with antique furniture made bright by sun streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows. The kitchen had been renovated—every appliance was top of the line, gleaming steel—but the layout was the same as when a whaler’s wife probably stood at the window waiting for her husband to return. Every room was carpeted with thick rugs, and I loved the furniture, reupholstered in expensive fabrics the color of the sea: pale green, deep blue.
Patrick’s mother was an amateur art dealer, so the paintings were rotated in and out of the house: sometimes, there would be a Jasper Johns above the low-slung velvet couch in the living room; sometimes, a more classic Cassatt. I knew little about art, but Patrick’s mother walked me through new acquisitions every time I came over, educating me. At the time, I thought she was grooming me to be Patrick’s bride. Looking back, I think she was just bored.
I was in love, with both Patrick and his lifestyle. I felt for the first time that there might be a safe place in the world forme.
But Patrick’s languor, I learned after I’d been sleeping with him for a few weeks, was due to heroin. In late July, Patrick overdosed at a party I wasn’t invited to and was sent to a fancy rehab in Vermont. He ran away from the rehab and showed up at our trailer, saying he wanted to marry me. My mother was thrilled, but I could see the writing on the wall: Patrick was high when he arrived, and I knew a future with him would not be the secure life I craved. But what were my options? I said yes.
We were engaged, Patrick living in my trailer with me, my mother, and Darla when I realized I was pregnant. Although (as I’ve said) many of my memories are absent or blurry, I can still remember with absolute clarity the night I woke next to Patrick and stared at a starless sky. All I’d known was that I needed to escape.
-10-
Salvatore
AS SALVATORE DROVE ROBERTFontenot to the station, he tried to meet the kid’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but Robert stared down at his lap and was silent.
The Fontenots were no idiots: before Salvatore had even finished arresting Robert, their lawyer informed APD that Robert would plead the fifth. They would surely post bail as soon as it was set, which would likely be the next morning. Salvatore knew the prosecutor would want more than just the DNA match to have a prayer of convicting. No jury would send a kid to jail for having sex; no prosecutor would even take it that far.
As he waited for processing, Salvatore thought through the case. Robert Fontenot had had sex with Lucy Masterson. It could have been consensual or rape. Where had the opiates come from? What sequence of events led to her death? Did the basketball prodigy from Barton Hills hold a woman underwater until she drowned? If so,why? And what did his buddies know? Salvatore needed more evidence that Roberthad been involved in Lucy’s death—he had to get one of the other lifeguards to talk.
—
THE GARDNER BETTS JUVENILEJustice Center was clean and organized but bleak. Armed guards nodded as they admitted Salvatore, checked with the sheriff, led him to Robert Fontenot’s cell.
On the bottom bunk, another juvenile offender stared into space, seemingly comatose. Robert lay on the top bunk curled up like an infant, his knees hugged to his chest. Salvatore could see only his neat haircut and his back, which readGARDNER BETTS INMATE.
“Robert?” he said. The cellmate sat up, met Salvatore’s gaze.
“He OK?” said Salvatore.
“How would I know?” said the other kid, lying back down and closing his eyes.
Robert didn’t move. Salvatore called his name again. Finally, he rolled over but did not rise. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said.
Someone began to scream in the cellblock. Another cry joined the first. There was banging, yelling, a soundtrack of mayhem. It was so loud. Salvatore was sweating: either the air-conditioning was broken or the temperature was set way too high.
“I didn’t kill her,” said Robert.
“That’s what they all say,” Robert’s cellmate said.
“I believed her,” said Robert. His eyes were glassy. Salvatore wondered if he was having a panic attack, or maybe detoxing? “I believed her. She said…she said she loved me,” said Robert.
For a moment, it seemed as if things quieted in the facility.The screams ceased; the breathing, the singing, the obscenities went quiet. “She loves me,” said Robert. “She promised me. She said she’d stop.”
“Oh, man,” said the kid on the bottom bunk. “He’s crazy, right?”
Salvatore’s stomach eased for a moment. If Robertwasinsane, he could get the boy out of here.
